Where a knitter, spinner, dyer, weaver and general fiber artist shares whats on her mind.

Monday, January 23, 2012

A New Knitter

My best friends are made up of craftiness. Courtney can sew, Anna can do nearly anything like cast metal, knit, weave, make paper and draw (she has this degree in art so you should get the idea), and now our friend Stina is learning to knit.

Stina is a wonderful woman that has flaming read hair, does table top role playing, magic, reads all kinds of books, loves to wear heels and if you need an interesting word for something, she's your lady.

To just give you an idea of how cool she is, this picture of her and Anna won Kim Harrison's contest last year for depicting Rachel and Ivy from the Hollows series:

Stina and Anna

With the two around me I never feel like a fiber geek, but as an artist and as someone who does lots of research. So you can imagine my excitement when Stina said she wanted to knit this past summer.

As many of use knitters know getting people into knitting can be hard. We have to carefully draw them in. I think its kinda like fishing. You have to have the right bait for a certain fish and then you have to hook them so fast they don't know what happened.

I last year spent a lot of time on the Wavy Lace Capelet for Stina. Anna had found the pattern when we were at the bookstore she works at and I had taken all that month's knitting magazines to look through while we drank coffee. Its bonding time for us and how I got Anna to start knitting since she loves her magazines. Well Anna found the pattern and we both loved it, but I was unsure who to knit it for till Anna exclaimed in a strike of brilliance that Stina needed it. I agreed and started hunting for the perfect yarn. When I was working Mountain View I had a bit of time on Wednesdays between school and work and hung out at Uncommon Threads. Well wouldn't you know it, they were having a sale the next time I walked in and one of the perks was that if you bought the remaining of a colorway you got it at an eve better discount! I scored some wool and tencel in a deep green that Anna and I thought would go gorgeously with her hair.

I knit it, found the perfect buttons and presented it to her as a late Christmas gift. It looks great and I think was the perfect bait because she asked Anna to teach her how to crotchet and for me to teach her how to knit.

So for her birthday I gave her yarn and the pattern for the Wound Up, with the sworn promise the she can call me day or night to help her with a knitting problem.